In one study, the USDA says an estimated 53.6 million people, or 17.4% of the U.S. population, lives in tracks that are considered food deserts.

My name is Deja Thomas.

I'm the manager of strategic partnerships and community initiatives at the Los Angeles Food Policy

Council.

So there's these long standing structural factors like redlining and structural racism that have disinvested into communities that have shaped neighborhood income levels.

And these are historical practices, many of which are banned now, but the effects of them we still see today.

Where these very same communities that are redlined, like if you look at a map of South Central LA, the same areas that are redlined are also the same areas that are most food insecure in the city.

So food deserts themselves, some folks say food apartheid or food desert being engineered.